The first Saturday in May – especially at Louisville’s Churchill Downs – rarely disappoints.
Sloppy though it may have been, May 5, 2018, proved to be the start of something special as Justify ran away from a muddied field to claim the Kentucky Derby and the first leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown. The stallion went on to win the Preakness and Belmont Stakes and secure the 13th – and most-recent – Triple Crown in the sport’s history. Justify’s jockey was Mike Smith who, at 52-years-old, became the oldest Triple Crown rider in history.
Here is the New York Times‘ account of that day’s race.
Later, there was controversy surrounding Justify. It was revealed over a year later that the horse had failed a drug test prior at the 2018 Santa Anita Derby but the ruling was not released by the California Horse Racing Board did not immediately announce the result and, later, dismissed it completely. Had the failed test disqualified Justify’s results from the Santa Anita it would not have had enough points to qualify to run for the roses.
Dr. Rick Arthur, the board's equine medical director, subsequently explained that their investigation suggested that the result was in fact due to feed contamination by jimson weed. One key factor was that horses from five different barns had high readings for scopalimine over the same period, though none of these were as high as Justify's. Arthur pointed out that Justify may well have ingested a seed, or his reading may have been inflated because of dehydration after the race. "Even though the level was relatively high in urine, the blood level was actually quite low", he said, explaining that this and the presence of another drug, atropine, found in jimson weed were consistent with feed contamination.
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